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Cal. WAT § 10735

This is the official text of Cal. WAT § 10735, part of California’s Water Code — governs water rights and water resource management.

Not legal advice. This page reproduces the official text of a government statute for reference only. Laws change, and how a statute applies depends on your specific facts. For advice about your situation, consult a licensed attorney in your state.

Official statutory text

As used in this chapter, the following terms have the following meanings:

(a) “Condition of long-term overdraft” means the condition of a groundwater basin where the average annual amount of water extracted for a long-term period, generally 10 years or more, exceeds the long-term average annual supply of water to the basin, plus any temporary surplus. Overdraft during a period of drought is not sufficient to establish a condition of long-term overdraft if extractions and recharge are managed as necessary to ensure that reductions in groundwater levels or storage during a period of drought are offset by increases in groundwater levels or storage during other periods.

(b) “Person” means any person, firm, association, organization, partnership, business, trust, corporation, limited liability company, or public agency, including any city, county, city and county, district, joint powers authority, state, or any agency or department of those entities. “Person” includes, to the extent authorized by federal or tribal law and subject to the limitations described in subdivisions (c) and (d) of Section 10720.3, the United States, a department, agency or instrumentality of the federal government, an Indian tribe, an authorized Indian tribal organization, or interstate body.

(c) “Probationary basin” means a basin for which the board has issued a determination under Section 10735.2.

(d) “Significant depletions of interconnected surface waters” means reductions in flow or levels of surface water that is hydrologically connected to the basin such that the reduced surface water flow or levels have a significant and unreasonable adverse impact on beneficial uses of the surface water.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.